As always, the Test XI of 2009 will be a major talking point as the merits of those who made the side and those left out are debated.

Choosing a Test team of the year can be hazardous. So far no lives have been lost, though it was a close run thing last year after Sachin Tendulkar was omitted. No amount of sweet words could convince offended parties that selection had been based on 12 months and not an entire career. In hindsight the criteria may have become too cut and dried, allowing the inclusion of one-year wonders. Accordingly, an adjustment has been made.

Only those performing well in 2009 have been considered but thereafter heed has been taken of records. Alas that has meant the exclusion of Thilan Samaraweera, the most productive batsman of the year (1234 runs at 72.6) and a miracle worker. It’s not so long ago that he was shot and almost killed when terrorists attacked the Sri Lankan bus. As usual, though, the side has been selected to win cricket matches, not as a slap on the back.

More than ever it is necessary to look beyond the statistics. Averages have been distorted this year by the free-scoring series between Sri Lankan and India. Four of the five highest scorers of the campaign are Sri Lankan. The Indian top order averaged variously 90, 70, 87, 67, 67 and 92.

They cannot all play. Even to concentrate on them means forgetting about Ross Taylor, Graeme Smith, Younus Khan, Chris Gayle, Michael Clarke, Jacques Kallis and so forth. As it happens, none of them made the cut anyhow, but all deserved consideration. Anyhow, here goes!

1 Virender Sehwag
Impossible to omit provided he has a presentable season. His ability to take attacks apart and to sustain his domination sets him apart. Sehwag is a great batsman and among the most devastating openers the game has known. His defence is immaculate and mostly mothballed as he plays his full range of shots from the first over. Impudent but rarely imprudent, his madness conceals a shrewd cricketing brain.

2 Andrew Strauss
Pipped higher scorers like Gautam Gambhir and Tillakaratne Dilshan due to the part he played in recovering the Ashes. Simply, he was the most influential batsman in a tight series. Read more…

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A game in which batsmen score at more than eight an over is great entertainment, sure, but great cricket? Not really

After that Wanderers game , I argued long and hard with those who thought it a great game of cricket. Nearly four years on, my views haven’t changed. In the days to come, many will speak of Rajkot as another classic. Some opportunists might even come out with commemorative DVDs, but nothing will change the facts. A game in which batsmen score at more than eight an over hardly constitutes an even tussle between bat and ball. Great entertainment, sure. Great cricket? Not really.

If you want to watch a real classic, watch how Pakistan chased down New Zealand’s total in the World Cup semi-final in 1992, or better still, go and watch footage of the greatest one-day match of all, Edgbaston 1999. Until there’s a tie in a World Cup final, that will remain the greatest cricket played in coloured clothes. The enormity of the occasion and what was at stake ensured as much.

There were two big differences between Rajkot and the Wanderers though. Back then, Mick Lewis and Nathan Bracken had a meltdown in the final stages, while Mark Boucher and Johan van der Wath produced the cameos that got South Africa over the line. At Rajkot, Thilina Kandamby and Angelo Mathews whittled the target down to 15 from 12 balls before lack of experience and basic technique played into Indian hands. And while the figures may suggest Lewis-style outings, both Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra were superb with the older ball, pinging in yorkers at will.

Built on solid Arjuna Ranatunga lines, Kandamby is no natural athlete, but only he can tell you what he was doing running to the bowler’s end with bat poised in mid-air. Both he and Mathews, who holed out to midwicket in the final over, were also unfortunate in that they found one of the few Indians who can actually field. He may be going on 37, but Sachin Tendulkar seldom makes the schoolboy errors that his more lithe, whippersnapper colleagues are periodically guilty of.

Virat Kohli was the biggest culprit in this game, putting down Upul Tharanga at point early in the innings. Geoffrey Boycott wasn’t in the commentary box, otherwise we’d most certainly have heard how his mum would have snaffled it while brandishing a stick of rhubarb, Read more…

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Rejoice. After 77 years of trying, we are finally No 1 in the ICC Test cricket rankings.  A 2-0 victory over Sri Lanka in a three Test series makes you feel real good.

Here's a review of the series:

Like Sehwag, MS Dhoni often doesn't get much credit for what he does for the team and the country. I agree that the Indian captain's batting style is pretty ungainly. But can anyone doubt its efficacy? Both his centuries were crucial to the team's cause - the 110 in Ahmedabad took India to a position of relative safety; his 100 in Mumbai ensured that Murali wouldn't be able to take a second shot at us. Why complain about methods when it gives you the right results?

The best thing about Dhoni is his level-headedness. At the post-match interview, he told Ravi Shastri that maintaining the No 1 position would be the real challenge. That's a leader with a vision. I would reiterate, make him the captain till the 2011 World Cup.

I was also surprised that Shastri got Tendulkar for the interview immediately after the match. It was good listening to the world's highest run scorer. But I was expecting someone like Dravid.

Dravid's contribution in the series was second to none.  His 177 saved us in the first Test. Otherwise, we might have had a totally different end to the contest.  He had another ton in the second Test and scored 70 plus again in the third.  We saw a new Dravid this time - he was ready to be more aggressive, more adventurous.  One would have liked to know what really brought about the change in his attitude. So why not him? Why does he have to be in the shadows every time?

Two factors clearly went in our favour in this series. Our catching, as Dhoni too pointed out, was pretty good.  Unlike the Lankans who were surprisingly butterfingered, we snapped up nearly everything.

The umpiring decisions, especially in the third Test, also went much in our favour. I would say, it made a difference to the outcome. Dilshan got two rank bad decisions in Mumbai. If something like that had happened to one of our top batters, we would have had a national debate. Besides, Dravid and Tendulkar and others also got decisions to their advantage. That surely Read more...

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A total of 241 men have taken the gloves in Test Match cricket and 203 in One Day International cricket. Historically it has always proved very difficult to combine both jobs of batting well and keeping wicket. However, a number of players have bucked the trend in these forms of the game and here we pay tribute to them.

The rapid onset of the one-day game in the recent years has persuaded international teams that they need to consider their wicket-keeper more as a front-line batsman, with the admission that they wouldn’t necessarily take the chances that the pure stumpers of old may have done. Long gone are the days of the wicket-keeper hidden away down the batting order in case of emergencies.

One of England’s finest glovemen was Bert Strudwick who played 28 Tests between 1910 and 1926 but ended with a Test batting average of 7.93 and a highest batting rating of just 104. George Duckworth replaced him in the team and held his place for most of the next decade but he ended with an average of 14.62 and a highest rating of 127. Other examples of the ‘all-field, little-bat’ keeper include Ken James (highest rating 41 in 11 Tests), Gil Langley (highest rating 223 in 26 Tests), and Narendra Tamhane (highest rating 251 in 21 Tests).

To illustrate this paradigm change, in the 1980s Test wicket-keepers averaged 23.61 with the bat. In the 1990s it was 27.29 and in the 2000s it had risen to 30.76.

Of course, some have flourished despite keeping wicket for the vast majority of their careers. Andy Flower managed to combine his role as key batsman and wicket-keeper and became the first keeper to reach the number one spot in the Reliance Mobile ICC Player Rankings for Test batsmen in 2001. He was followed the following year by Adam Gilchrist, who hit 17 Test centuries and single-handedly revolutionised the way wicket-keepers are viewed in the longer format Read more…

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Kumar Sangakkara comes across as a charismatic personality who is as erudite off the field as he is astute on it. But then that is something one can expect from someone who is training to be a lawyer in between cricket tours. Fully aware of Sri Lanka’s abysmal record in Tests in India – over 27 years in 14 Tests they lost eight and drew six – he put the ball firmly in the home team’s court on arrival by saying that the pressure was all on India while his team had nothing to lose.

It was clear that the Sri Lankans came over as underdogs despite the fact that they are the No 2 ranked team in the world and India are one place behind. Of course this could largely be due to the fact that the Lankans are so tough to beat at home but events in the just concluded Ahmedabad Test proved that the Indians who themselves have a formidable record at home can underestimate their neighbours only at their own peril. Under the circumstances it was gratifying to read that MS Dhoni after the conclusion of the Ahmedabad Test has said that it is going to be a close series.

There is much talk about the lustrous quality of the Indian batting line up and why not? Where else will you find four batsmen in the top seven average 50 plus? One other has an average in the mid 40s while the averages of the other two are in the mid 30s. One batsman is the leading run getter and century maker in Test history and another is fifth in the all time list of run getters. A total number of 16 double centuries – including two triple hundreds - have been notched up between five batsmen in the line up.

These days however one has to in the same breath talk about the lustrous quality of the Sri Lankan batting. Like with India, batting has always been the Lankans’ strength but in recent times it has been at the peak. The Ahmedabad Test underlined this. Sri Lanka’s total of 760 for seven declared was the highest Read more…

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Phew. Australia’s captain Ricky Ponting couldn’t have found a better expression to sum up the mood ahead of the seven One-dayers, starting tomorrow at Vadodara. Actually, make it double phew.

Just 24 hours have stood between the last tournament and the new series. True, the Champions League was an unexpected stop, a commitment that the three boards involved had to fulfil; but a one-day gap is clearly too painful even for the staunchest cricket-lover, or the most vela person.

Till not too long ago, we used to look at India’s players with raised brows when they grumbled about excessive cricket; now, the fans are doing the same, and more loudly too. This is surely the last warning, if at all the BCCI bosses are keeping a close watch on the health of the golden goose.

The Indian team, however, won’t have the luxury of complaining: it has done well in bilateral and tri-series but the big ones have truly been unkind to it. It failed to go far in, both, the T20 World Cup and the Champions Trophy, leaving its supporters in borrowed tears.

Fatigue is, of course, closely linked to success: you don’t feel it as long as you are doing well in life, or winning on the field; but a string of failures, on both fronts, sap all your energy and spirit.

It would not be wise to write the obituary of the golden goose, though, just because the unlucky Champions League didn’t ignite the country, like the IPL had done; it is a new format and will take some time to catch on. It, of course, didn’t help that the three Indian teams totally lacked lustre too.

MS Dhoni now has an unenviable task on his plate: he has to not only counter the charge of the best team in the world but also breathe life into the tiring fans, if not a dying game. A couple of sterling performances and some fine victories will surely bring the stands alive Read more...

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Not many would have heard of Julien Fountain, but chances are you might just hear more about the man, considering how persistently he is applying for a job in Indian cricket.

On October 1, Fountain applied for the post of fielding coach, Hindustan Times has learnt, after being rejected for the same position about a year ago. The Board of Control for Cricket in India then had Robin Singh in place and did not take Fountain’s offer seriously. There’s no indication that they’re going to do so now, but that hasn’t stopped the Briton from trying.

For the record, Fountain has worked with the West Indies, Pakistan and England (T20) teams on-and-off, usually on a series-by-series basis. He has also worked with age-group teams and women’s teams, against mostly from the countries above, but rarely on a full-time basis. Fountain holds an ECB Level 4 coaching certificate and lists 15 different counties as those he has worked with between 1996 and now.

In his three-part application to the Board, Fountain lists as references former and current cricketers, including Ian Bishop, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Kamran Akmal - not quite the A-list of fielding.

Fountain’s application includes a short-term plan to improve the fielding ahead of the 2010 T20 World Cup in the West Indies, and lists Throwing Biomechanics, Catching, Ground Fielding, Sliding-Diving-Rolling, Tactical Awareness, Pre-shot Movements and Stances, Statistical Analysis and individual testing and programmes for players.

The most interesting part of the application, however, is an open letter to skipper M.S. Dhoni and coach Gary Kirsten, neither of whom would have received the communication as it was sent to the BCCI. Fountain begins by extensively quoting the captain and coach being critical of the fielding in a press conference. He then writes: “I can guarantee you, if you allow me to coach your squad, you will see an improvement in all areas of your fielding game, which I will be Read more…

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Does the Board of Control for Cricket in India care for Indian cricket? More pertinently, should it care for Indian cricket?

Not according to its senior counsel and advocate KK Venugopal who five years ago in the Supreme Court made a statement that shocked cricketers and cricket fans throughout the country

— ‘If India plays England, it is a match played by the official team of BCCI and not the official team of India…We do not even fly the national flag nor do we use any national emblem in the activities of the Board.’’

Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and the rest play for the official team of the BCCI, Venugopal went onto add and not the official team of India.

A group of former ‘India’ players expressed their sense of outrage and hurt in a joint letter to the BCCI President claiming they had always felt honoured to represent the country and were now distressed by the Board’s stand. One is not aware if the Board bothered to respond to them.

The International Cricket Council has recently introduced the playing of the national anthem before each match in their tournaments including the Champions Trophy in South Africa. The sight and sound of foreigners beautifully rendering ‘Jana Gana Mana’ with the ‘Indian’ team proudly standing to attention was one of the few highlights of another disappointing tournament for our cricket fans.

Perhaps it is time for the BCCI to inform the ICC that India’s national anthem should not be played before their matches and the BCCI could pay a handsome fee to AR Rehman for the use of ‘Jai Ho’ instead of ‘Jana Gana Mana’. Or else the Indian government may be forced to intercede on this matter considering the BCCI’s stated legal stand.

The inaugural Champions League being played between the top 12 Twenty20 teams from around the world (excluding Pakistan, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe) is the latest bogus Read more…

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When India went into the Champions Trophy, we all knew they wouldn’t be the same side as they were for the 18 months, as there was no Zaheer Khan or Virender Sehwag, and injury to Yuvraj Singh worsened the matter.

But absence of these big players, gave youngsters a golden opportunity to put their hands up and shine on the international platform like these absent biggies did a few years back (Yuvraj and Zaheer made international debut during 2000 Champions Trophy in Nairobi), but they failed to grab the attention. Only Virat Kohli managed to make an impression, and that too in the last match when the Champions Trophy campaign was all over for India.

It is obvious that when these players come back into the side, India can again boast of being a tougher and a more competitive team.

But the question is, do we really have the bench-strength to make the Indian team consistently a top side? Are we really grooming talents for the international arena?

Yusuf Pathan has shown his prowess and potential in the IPL but has failed to carry it to the international level. Suresh Raina has come off good and looks promising for the future. Virat and Rohit Sharma are the other two batsmen who have everything needed for becoming successful at the international level but the duo lacks consistency.

Some time back India had a sweet dilemma of picking two or three pacers from the bunch that had RP Singh, Sreesanth, Irfan Pathan, Munaf Patel, Ishant Sharma with Zaheer Khan Read more…

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Two contrasting men led Rest of India’s revival with some lovely exhibition of seam bowling. If Sreesanth, of late, is trying to avoid getting into a hyper-aggressive state and tries to remain calm and focused on his craft, Munaf Patel, who is generally laid-back, seems to bowl better when he gets more aggressive. Both hit the right notes today in slightly overcast conditions to turn out impressive performances on what still is a decent batting pitch.

Watching Sreesanth bowl is a fascinating experience. You know what he is capable of in his bowling art - that proud seam and the rest of it - but you also know that he is prone to self-destruction. The entire package is so sizzling that you can never turn your eyes off him when he is on the field.

The day started with that familiar sinking feeling as Sreesanth featured in a newspaper supplement talking about his ambition of acting and his thoughts on marriage. On the ground, though, Sreesanth the bowler turned out in full force.

Right from the start, he was switched on. With Sreesanth, as always, you don’t only notice his bowling but the entire package of quirky traits. Today, those signature self-exhortations at the top of the run-up were not seen too often, nor was there any special celebration on claiming a wicket. Not that there is anything wrong in either trait, but of late, he has been waging a battle within himself to avoid anything that could be seen as evidence against his attitude.

And he didn’t offer any room for criticism of his bowling either. He judged the pitch correctly and knew that full-length was the way to go on this surface. The seam rushed on straight and landed on a good length before cutting either way as the flick of the wrist at the release had wanted it. Sahil Kukreja couldn’t pick him yesterday and his harassment increased today before Sreesanth terminated his misery with a peach that cut in to hit the top of the off stump.

He returned in the afternoon to lead Rest of India’s revival with yet another probing spell. He later said that after his stint under Allan Donald for Warwickshire, he has tried to Read more…

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